Chris Wiser explains when MSPs should fire clients: those who drain staff morale, ignore recommendations, or stay on outdated break/fix plans. He suggests using cybersecurity risk assessments to educate clients about upgrading to managed plans, and argues that sometimes firing a client protects your team and your business.
So we've all had terrible clients. It just happens. It's part of this world of msps that we live in. So how do you determine if that client is a fit for you or if it's somebody that you need to fire? You need to take a look at a lot of different things, but more importantly, you need to focus on how does it make you and your team feel if every time somebody calls to put in a ticket and everybody cringes and runs the other way, probably not the best client for you. At the same time, that doesn't mean that they can be a bad client forever. That could be a reason that you just need to talk to them a little bit more, get them to understand, do things like a CSRA to show them what their risk is, get them on the plan that you recommend. Because a lot of times you have a pain in the butt client like that, it's because they've dictated the path, they've chosen what IT services that they think that they need and you've allowed them to do that. There's a reason that we have the recommendations that we do, and it's to give them the best service possible to reduce the ticket load that we work with on a daily basis to have that better customer experience when we allow them to dictate that path of behavior. Because they're not in this world, they're not in it, they're not in cybersecurity, we tend to lose that customer experience piece. Yes, they're getting what they think that they want and they're probably paying less or paying closer to what they're looking for, but they're not getting all of the things that we as the experts know that they need and that's going to reduce their customer service. So if you can get them on a plan that you recommend, sometimes those pain in the butt clients can turn into really good ones. So if you do determine that a customer is not a fit, they're not taking your recommendations, then it's time to start having some conversations and thinking about whether or not they're a fit long term. And what you really need to consider is the impacts to your company, the impact to your employees. A bad customer can bring an entire company down. Just think about, you know, sports analogies. You always see the crazy athletes that start causing trouble in the locker room and, and the performance of that team goes down. The same thing can happen with a bad client. So it can be imperative to your business. When you have a customer that's not taking your advice, that's constantly complaining that's bringing your employees, your staff down. Now it's time to move on. Because that's just taking away from the good clients that you have. The client experience you can spend with a good client, and you need to focus on that. And sometimes you may have clients that just aren't doing the things that you know that they need to do. Maybe they're on a old break fix plan that you no longer offer to new customers and you've just kind of tolerated and let them stay on that for a while. You need to understand and think about the larger overall business. It's not just about, you know, they can be a perfectly good customer that's just on the wrong plan and they're comfortable being on the wrong plan that can still impact your operations and your business. So the same thing would apply as going and addressing a pain in the butt client you want to go through. You want to make your recommendations, look for them to follow your recommendations, to see you as the expert and get them over to where you need to be. Because just like a pain in the butt client can be a drain on your employees and your business. The same thing can be said for having somebody on the wrong plan. We typically avoid break fix in the future because it, it's always an emergency. It's always something that needs to be done right away. And in most cases, if they were doing the things that we knew that they needed, they wouldn't be in that situation in the first place. They just need to understand and realize that the reason that we recommend the things that we do is, is ideally so problems don't happen in the first place. The less your customers have to call you, the better it is for both of you. So one of the ways that we can address this is by running a cybersecurity risk assessment. This goes for break fix clients for customers that are pains in the butt. Like anybody who's not on the plan that we know that they need to be on. Having a CSRA showing them what their risk is, educating them on what the cybersecurity landscape is, really helps and goes a long way to them realizing that you know as much as they thought that they knew about IT and cybersecurity, they're ways off from that and that they really need to both have a cybersecurity and IT expert in their corner and that you're that person. So giving them that cybersecurity risk assessment is going to help educate them and show them the way. We've talked about this in another video if you're interested in more information on that, see the description below. Thanks so much for watching. If you like this video, like comment and subscribe for the next one.
